


Arctic Flower

by branwyn



Series: Strange Bright Crowds (Jessica lives 'verse) [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caretaking, Domestic Fluff, F/F, F/M, Happy Ending, Harold uses his illegal clandestine surveillance system to give Grace what she wants, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Jessica POV, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:47:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22667266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwyn/pseuds/branwyn
Summary: “Hi!” she says. “I'm Grace, from the park yesterday?”
Relationships: Harold Finch/Grace Hendricks, Jessica Arndt/Grace Hendricks, Jessica Arndt/John Reese
Series: Strange Bright Crowds (Jessica lives 'verse) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638598
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Arctic Flower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talkingtothesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/gifts).



A loud crash behind her snaps Jessica out of her funk. Someone is groaning like they’re hurt; she needs to be a nurse, not a wilting flower, if she can remember how. 

When she gets to the promenade railing, two people are writhing on the ground, surrounded by what used to be a free-standing easel and a box of paints. Next to them is a bicycle on its side, wheels spinning lazily in the air.

Even as Jessica kneels next to a petite, pretty woman with red hair, the biker gets back on his feet and peddles away. Since he’s wearing a helmet and pads, Jessica decides he’s not her problem.

“You shouldn’t move,” she tells the woman. 

“Oh my god.” The woman looks up at her with large green eyes. She’s about Jessica’s age, maybe a couple of years older.

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Grace,” she says, with a slow blink. “Grace Hendricks. He knocked my paint box over, I need to...”

“No, no, hey, Grace.” She’s so fine-boned that Jessica can keep her down with one hand. “Paints can wait. Does anything hurt?”

“I don’t think so?” Confused, she lifts her arm. Against the light blue wool of her coat sleeve, there’s a patch of red spreading rapidly around a tear in the fabric. “Um.”

Briskly, Jessica pushes the coat sleeve up to find a long gash, maybe three inches, high on her right forearm. There’s an exposed screw in the railing nearby that’s probably to blame. The wound is bleeding freely, but not so fast that she’s worried. 

Jessica tugs her own scarf from around her neck, ignoring Grace’s protests as she folds it up and presses it to the wound. Peter gave her the scarf, and she’s not his biggest fan right now.

“Looks like the guy on the bike didn’t bother to stick around,” she says wryly, as she checks for more injuries: combing through Grace’s hair for lumps or bleeding, testing limbs with gentle pressure. 

Grace keeps blinking up at her like she’s dazed, but she did hit the pavement pretty hard. “Well, you’re not supposed to ride bikes here. Pretty much for this reason.” 

“Someone should have told him that before he knocked you down.”

“You can tell someone and tell them, but if they don’t want to hear it…” Grace starts getting to her feet. Jessica puts an arm around the nipped waist of her coat dress, supporting her. 

“You might get lightheaded,” she warns her. “Here, come sit down for a minute.” 

Jessica guides Grace over to the bench, then starts gathering up the paint tubes and other little items that seem like they must belong to her—a small blue notebook, pencils, a few brushes of varying sizes, erasers, an x-acto knife and a wad of putty. The notebook had landed face-down and open, and when Jessica picks it up her eye falls on a small watercolor painting of a goldfinch, wearing glasses and a fedora. She can’t help smiling at it.

“Thank you so much,” Grace says, when Jessica carries her stuff back to the bench. “You’re such a kind person. You said your name was Jessica?”

“Yeah. It’s no problem. I’m a nurse, so, this is what I do.”

“I figured you must be something like that. But you’re not at work right now. At least, I assume you’re not.”

“Some jobs mean you’re always on duty. Cops, soldiers.” Jessica grimaces. “Nurses aren’t that different. Or artists, probably. I bet you’re probably always noticing things you want to paint.”

“It’s like you know me,” Grace laughs. 

The wind isn’t so bad up here today. Jessica has been walking on the promenade a lot lately. She’s probably found every spot within a mile of Michelle’s place where a person can think depressing thoughts in relative peace. In the afternoons, when she has to meet Peter after work, she usually comes here first. 

And she doesn’t want to have to stop coming here because Peter got restless and came looking for her. “I have to get going in a minute,” she tells Grace, “but I’m going to sit here with you until I’m sure you’re ok. Do you live nearby?”

“I don’t, but my boyfriend is meeting me, he should be—oh! Speak of the devil.” Grace waves at someone, smiling brightly, and Jessica turns around. 

She’s expecting a guy who looks like an artist. Long hair, maybe. But the man hurrying towards them is dressed like an accountant, with sideburns. His wire-rimmed glasses look just like the bird’s in Grace’s notebook. 

“Grace! What on earth happened to you?” He sounds more like a nervous mother than a boyfriend, Jessica thinks. When he sees the bloody scarf, he inhales sharply and turns very white. 

“A cyclist on the promenade mowed me down, easel and all,” Grace tells him cheerfully. “But that’s all right, because I got to meet Jessica. She’s a nurse, so she came over to help. Jessica, this is my boyfriend, Harold.”

Harold bends over Grace’s arm, tapping at her fingers until she moves her hand. His face is so pale that Jessica thinks, _You’re about to be my next patient, guy._

He tears his eyes away to blink at her. “Thank you so much for your help,” he says politely. “Is she—do you have any advice for what we should do next?”

“Oh, Harold, it’s just a scrape.” Grace pokes him.

“Keep the dressing—keep the scarf on it for right now,” Jessica tells her. “As soon as you can find a bathroom, wash it under running water. Be sure to disinfect the crap out of it when you get home. You’ve got New York street bacteria in there.” Grace grins at her; Jessica can’t help smiling back. “If it gets really swollen or painful in the next 24 hours, go straight to a doctor.”

“Shouldn’t she see a doctor now?” says Harold, his voice high-pitched.

“It couldn’t hurt,” Jessica nods. She would have suggested it, but it’s the kind of advice people usually ignore unless they were going to do it anyway. “It’s not a scrape, by the way, it’s a gash. That’s deeper and more likely to scar.”

Harold’s eyes get wider. “We’re taking you to the doctor,” he states, mouth firm.

She wants to glare at him for giving orders, but Grace just gives him an indulgent eye-roll and shoots a fond look at Jessica.

“Honestly,” she says. “The way men fuss.”

Harold blushes, then leans close, curling around her like he’s trying to shield her from the wind coming off the water. Jessica takes a deep breath. 

She’d known someone who’d treated her like that once. Like he wanted to protect her from things, not because he thought she was weak, but because she was precious to him.

“It was nice meeting you,” Jessica tells them, forcing a bright smile. “Despite the circumstances. Take care of that arm.”

“Oh! You too, absolutely. And I will.” Grace smiles brightly, and Jessica ducks her head, walking away.

A year ago, meeting a woman like Grace under circumstances like this, Jessica might have made a new friend. Now—she guesses she’s lucky just to have found a single bright spot in a string of shitty days.

*

Two days later, she’s texting her mother before lunch and trying not to cry in the middle of a coffee shop.

There are only four months left until the wedding, and it feels like all she and Peter ever do is fight. Sometimes, when Jessica is alone and she’s had a few glasses of wine, she fantasizes about giving back the ring and cancelling—everything. Her entire life. Leave a note, run away to—she doesn’t know where. The army? They always need medics. No time for angry phone calls or awkward apologies if she’s saving lives and getting shot at. 

But she isn’t drunk now. It’s daylight, she’s had three cups of coffee, and her mom’s on the phone reminding her that all couples fight and it’s important to forgive each other. Her mom thinks Peter can do no wrong. It isn’t even her fault, since Jessica’s never told her anything important about their relationship. 

Once, at an airport two years ago, Jessica saw a familiar face standing head and shoulders above the crowd. Memories from another chapter of her life came rushing back so fast that she’d felt slightly out of her mind. Jessica never felt more like herself than when she and John were together. She’d been tough-minded and practical back then, a girl with a pretty face and a personality like a pair of old combat boots. 

That girl never would have had to wonder if she was brave enough to leave a man who was hurting her.

This morning, she had to splint her own wrist with one clumsy hand while crying in the bathroom. Now her clothes stink like the giant vase of roses Peter sent as an apology. He knows, or should know, that she doesn’t like roses, but he might have done it on purpose. He can’t understand why they can’t just live together like a normal couple. Like they were planning to, before Michelle offered her a free place to stay.

Suddenly, through the big cafe window, Jessica sees Grace coming down the sidewalk, Harold a step behind her. They look like an illustration in a children’s book: Grace, with her red hair and the bright solid colors of her clothing, her boyfriend with his beaky nose and glasses and awkward briefcase. 

Jessica doesn’t expect them to notice her, or care if they do. But then Grace looks directly at her. Her face lights up.

The next thing Jessica knows, Grace is inside the cafe and making a beeline for her table, pulling Harold along by the hand. “Hi!” she says. “Grace, from the park yesterday?”

“Yeah, of course,” says Jessica, too stunned not to be polite. What were the odds of running into the same strangers twice in a single week, in Brooklyn? “Nice to see you guys again.”

“Quite a coincidence,” Harold murmurs, eyebrows arched.

“Did you get the arm looked at?” Jessica asks Grace.

“Sure did. Harold wouldn’t stop making sad faces until I said I’d go.” Harold’s lips purse. “See? Just like that. Anyway, doc says I’m good as new.”

“There is still a _gash_ in your _arm_ ,” Harold says, like Grace’s determination to see things in the best light is painful to him.

Grace waves him off. “Do you mind if I sit for a minute?” She sits before Jessica can do more than shrug one shoulder. Harold perches beside her, like they’re joined by a string. “I guess you must live nearby,” Grace says.

“I, my friend lives here. I’m from Washington. State.” Now that she’s on the east coast she always has to clarify. “My job doesn’t start for awhile, so I’m apartment-sitting for a friend. What about you guys?”

“We just really like taking walks around the city,” says Grace. 

“And in fact,” Harold murmurs, “it’s particularly remarkable that we should bump into you today, since…?” He gives Grace a significant look.

“Oh, do you have it on you?”

“I just never took it out of my briefcase.” 

“Well, show it to her, then.”

Harold reaches, then stops himself with a small laugh. “We should explain,” he says. “When Grace was being seen by the doctor, we couldn’t help noticing that you had sacrificed a rather lovely and expensive scarf to bandage her arm. Grace had the idea that we should replace it, on the off chance that we might bump into you again some day on the promenade. We certainly didn’t expect it to be this soon, but here we are.”

Harold clicks the briefcase open, presenting it to Grace like a waiter with a tray. Grace plucks a small square box out, and slides it across the table, beaming.

“Harold thought we should just replace the old one. I mean, find one that was just like it. But, no offense, you don’t really seem like a Burberry person? And anyway, I figured you must have other winter scarves, and since it’s almost spring, you might like to have something completely new.”

Jessica’s eyes are going to roll out of her head if they get any wider. For lack of knowing what else to do, she opens the box. 

The scarf inside is fringed shantung silk in robin’s egg blue. She unfolds it, and the fabric flows over her hands as smooth and cool as water. 

Crying in front of these rich, kindhearted weirdoes is the last thing she wants to do, but it’s been a long time since anyone was this nice to her for no reason. It doesn’t help that a woman she talked to for five minutes last week somehow knows her better than her fiance does after two years of dating.

When she looks up, Grace’s expression is concerned and curious. Harold just looks mildly alarmed. 

“It’s really beautiful.” Jessica gives them a watery, self-deprecating smile. “I actually hated that scarf, but it was a present, so I couldn’t get rid of it.”

Grace pokes Harold’s arm. “Told you.”

“Yes, all right. At least I was wise enough to defer to your judgment.”

“We’re on our way somewhere right now, but—” Grace puts her handbag on the table and rummages through it for a long time before emerging with a silver case, and then a business card. _Grace Hendricks, freelance illustrator,_ it says, over the logo of a butterfly.

“No pressure or anything,” Grace says earnestly. “But I know how lonely the city can be when you haven’t had a chance to make friends yet. Give me a call sometime, okay? We’ll get coffee.”

*

Jessica doesn’t plan to call Grace. She doesn’t have the energy for new friends these days. Selfishly, she doesn’t want to give up any of her Peter-free hours to do something that will take effort, like figuring out exactly what she can and can’t say to a new acquaintance.

It’s the scarf, oddly enough, that makes up her mind for her. She can’t stop touching it. For a few days, she just carries it around in her purse, taking it out and wrapping the cool, fine fabric around her hands. Peter hasn’t seen it yet. He hasn’t noticed that the old one is missing, but he will notice if she has a new one all of a sudden. He’ll want to know where it came from. If she tells him, he won’t believe her.

When Jessica texts Grace after the weekend and arranges a coffee date at some fancy place she suggests in Manhattan, she wears the scarf.

“I knew it would look amazing on you,” Grace says, before she even says hi. 

Jessica touches it self-consciously. “Thanks for suggesting this. Isolation gets to be a habit. Sometimes I forget it isn’t really good for me.”

“Oh, boy do I know that feeling.” Grace laughs. “It’s like, you didn’t choose it, but you had to get used to it, and then it’s what makes you feel comfortable and safe. I can tell you, Harold and I never would have met if he hadn’t gotten up the nerve to talk to me first.”

Jessica’s a little surprised by that—he seemed like such a nervous guy—but then she pictures the twitchy mouth flattening into a stubborn line, and she can see it.

“I was painting, at that same railing, actually.” Grace wrinkles her nose happily. “I guess that’s just where I meet people.”

“It’s a good place,” Jessica allows. “I’m there most days.”

“You said you’re waiting for your job to start? What are you doing in the mean time?”

“Ah, not much. Trying not to be a total slob in my friend’s place. It’s kind of small so I walk around a lot. And I spend the evenings with my fiance.”

“Oh! Silly me, of course, I see the ring now. It’s good you’re not completely alone, then.”

Jessica smiles weakly. Grace sips her coffee.

“Is he from the city?”

“No. Philadelphia, originally, but he’s been working here for awhile. We’re moving upstate together after the wedding.”

“Where to?”

“New Rochelle.”

“I bet it’s pretty there. Peaceful.”

“I hope so,” Jessica shrugs. Time to change the subject. “Do you and Harold live together?”

“Yeah, we’ve been dating for a couple of years, but we moved in together about—six months ago, gosh. Harold was kind of anxious about the building I lived in, and I was tired of commuting back and forth across the city, so we’re both happier now.”

“You guys seem really good together.”

“We clicked pretty fast,” Grace says. “And neither of us are the kind of people who click with people in general. You find someone like that, you hang onto them. Well,” she tilts her head. “I guess I don’t need to tell you.”

Dreamily, thoughtlessly, Jessica says, “Actually, I knew someone like that once. Him and me—we didn’t make sense on paper. You know, he wasn’t the type of guy my parents approved of. But when we were together, we were perfect.”

Grace’s eyes are extremely round. “Are you...sorry if this isn’t something you want to hear, but it doesn’t sound like you’re talking about your fiance.”

“No.” Her breath catches, but she doesn’t hesitate. “I wasn’t.”

Grace looks appalled. “Honey,” she breathes, “why in the world are you engaged to him then?”

Jessica opens her mouth, but explanations dry up on the tip of her tongue. Looking at Grace’s expression, arguments like _my mother would be disappointed in me, my dad would say it was irresponsible,_ sound trivial. Like excuses.

“What was his name?” says Grace softly.

Saying it feels like lancing an infection, a horrible relief. “John,” she says. “His name’s John, and I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

Grace holds her hand until she stops crying. She brushes Jessica’s hair out of her face and rubs her back. Her fingers brush over Jessica’s wrist by accident, and Jessica knows when she feels the splint under the sleeve because she freezes.

There’s silence for a heartbeat.

“Come home and have lunch at our place,” Grace says in a rush. “Harold won’t be home till tonight, and I baked this morning.”

Jessica takes a shaky breath. She thinks about going back to Michelle’s apartment, showering and getting dressed, putting on shoes that hurt her feet just so she can hold her breath around Peter all night.

“Sounds good,” she says to Grace. “What did you bake?”

*

Grace serves them cold strawberry soup and goat cheese crostini and chicken salad on a bed of greens for lunch. They eat in a sun drenched kitchen at a mid-century dinette, surrounded by ornamental china and novelty potholders. Afterwards, they sit on the couch with coffee and a basket of Grace’s lemon poppyseed muffins. 

“Harold doesn’t drink coffee,” Grace is saying forlornly. “Now, I have nothing against tea. But he has the nerve to say that southern sweet tea doesn’t count. The man puts sugar in his green tea!”

Jessica absorbs the pale yellow walls. She studies the art nouveau prints and the messy, overstuffed bookcase. She can read a story in the seamless marriage of the Louis XV chair and the empty birdcage, the gauzy curtains, the easel, the inlaid urns. 

This is the kind of home people make together when they’re so much in love that there’s nothing left to prove. Jessica feels hidden and safe here, like she’s mined through rock to find a perfect blue pool of peace, lit from above by a single warm shaft of sunlight.

For awhile, Grace keeps up a stream of chatter that Jessica can absorb with one ear. Names of parks, galleries, cafes, and local artists she likes. Places she and Harold visit when they’re walking around the city on the weekends. Jessica doesn’t contribute much, but Grace doesn’t make her feel awkward about it. 

Eventually, Jessica opens her mouth to mumble something about what a nice time she had, and how she should get going. 

“You could stay here,” Grace says in a rush.

Jessica stares. 

“We have all this _room_.” Grace gestures around them, like the unused space exasperates her. “If you’re more comfortable at your friend’s apartment, I won’t be offended, but you’re gonna be in the city for such a short time, it seems like a shame for you to be cooped up alone there. And honestly, I’d enjoy the company. Not that you have to entertain me! I just think it would be nice?”

Jessica looks at Grace, lips parted, conscious that something has changed in the last few hours. It’s as if saying John’s name back in the cafe broke her ability to stay in denial. The next time she sees Peter, she’s not sure if she’ll be able to keep pretending things are normal. She doesn’t think she wants to, and that’s a big problem.

“At least stay for dinner,” Grace amends. “It’s already so late in the afternoon.” She doesn’t ask if anyone is expecting her. The silence feels pointed.

Jessica doesn’t intend to move in with Grace and Harold any more than she’d planned to take Grace up on her coffee invitation. But that night Harold brings home steaks from the Grand, and Grace unpacks at least ten cartons of breads and sides and dessert options. It feels almost like a celebration, or maybe a welcome. Jessica eats more than she can remember eating in weeks—she hasn’t had much appetite—and lets Harold refill her wine glass until it just makes more sense to use the guest room. 

When she sees how many calls and texts she missed by leaving her phone in her bag in the living room while they ate, it suddenly makes sense to block Peter’s number, too.

The next morning, Grace comes with her to Michelle’s and helps her pack up her suitcases. Most of Jessica’s stuff is still back home. Her mom’s supposed to ship it out to her after she and Peter get settled in New Rochelle. She and Grace don’t discuss what they’re doing; it would fall apart if she tried to frame it in words. Jessica feels breathless with excitement, like she’s sneaking around, doing something she shouldn’t. 

She’s grateful Grace didn’t try to give her some big speech. When she was younger, maybe she could have changed her whole life in a single afternoon. Right now, she feels pretty brave just for changing her address. It’s such a small thing, by comparison. Not a whole new path, just a small course correction.

Now she understands why she and Peter fought so much about living together. She never would have had the nerve to ask Grace to help her move out of Peter’s apartment. 

That night, Grace and Harold sit with her while she texts Peter. It helps, having them close. They treat Jessica like she’s doing the obvious thing, the only thing a reasonable person could do under the circumstances. It helps her feel less like she’s just being selfish, making problems for everyone around her. 

_I can’t marry you,_ she types. _You know why._ She has two months left before her contract starts. Somehow, she’ll have to find a new place she can afford on her own, maybe a roommate. Maybe she should look for a different job; Peter knows the name of her hospital. _I’m sending you the ring. Don’t contact me again._

*

Nine years ago in Tacoma, Jessica was having a drink with friends after work when a fight broke out at the bar. While her friends cheered boozily from the table, Jessica marched up to a tall guy in uniform and backed him into a booth until his knees folded and he was blinking up at her curiously. 

“Hold still,” she’d ordered, grabbing a wad of napkins out of a dispenser and pressing them against the cut that was dripping blood into his eye. 

He’d tried to gently push her hand away, muttering something about not wanting to bleed on her, and Jessica snorted at him. “Do you want to be a tough guy and get a giant scar on that pretty forehead?” she said. “Or do you want to let me work here?”

He’d let her work. “I’m John,” he said, when she was done. “So, do you really think I’m pretty?”

Jessica’s beginning to feel like she’s that girl again, the confident one with both feet on the ground. All _that_ Jessica feels for Peter is the same pity she has for difficult patients, the angry, disruptives ones so wounded on the inside that they can’t stop hurting themselves or the people who try to take care of them. 

Peter’s Jessica, the one who went to fittings for a couture bridal grown and, when it fit like a glove, congratulated herself on being too anxious to eat, is still part of her. But now that she’s allowed to have opinions, even that Jessica doesn’t want to stay. Trying to love Peter was like trying to save someone drowning; he just didn’t know how to hold onto her without dragging them both under the water.

*

When she’s been at Grace and Harold’s house for a week, Jessica sends the ring back to Peter by courier. Grace is out teaching a class that morning, so she takes a long walk to a market and buys the ingredients for chicken parmesan. She cooks dinner that night for an impressed and appreciative audience. Harold tries not to set foot in the kitchen except to use his fancy electric kettle that has temperature setting for five different kinds of tea. And Grace is better at baking than she is at entrees.

They’re sitting around the table together, Grace and Jessica on one side, Harold on the other, when Harold frowns and takes his phone from his vest pocket. Eyebrows flying upward, he excuses himself from the table and steps into the living room.

He reappears a few minutes later, carrying his laptop.

“I got a notification from the security feed on the front door,” he explains. “I’m afraid Peter is outside.”

“But how—” Grace touches her arm. Jessica looks at her. “I swear, I didn’t tell him where I was.”

“At a guess, he bribed the courier for that information,” says Harold briskly. “Jessica, please stay here with Grace.”

“Wait just a minute!” Grace exclaims.

“I’m just going to ask him to leave, I promise not to fight him in a duel.”

Grace puts her hands on her hips. “What if he has other ideas?”

“Jessica said he works in real estate. Given the location of our home, I’m sure he understands the caliber of lawyer I can afford, if he chooses to be uncivilized.” He glances at Jessica, mouth twisting. “ _More_ uncivilized, that is.”

“No, Grace is right. Another guy is just going to set him off.” Jessica gets up from the table. “I’ll talk to him. If he knows you guys are here he won’t try anything.” She’s not sure if that’s true. It’s less important than not repaying Grace’s kindness by sending her boyfriend into the line of fire.

Harold looks shocked. “Oh no, I don’t think that’s a good—”

“Over my dead body,” Grace cuts him off flatly. 

Harold blinks at her. She plants her hands on her hips. “ _I’m_ going,” she declares. “Both of you stay here.”

She strides through the kitchen doorway. Harold makes an abortive move after her, but he’s too slow. “Can I help you?” they hear Grace call out from the front hall.

Jessica feels cold in the pit of her stomach. She starts edging toward the door. If _Grace_ gets hurt because of her, Jessica will feel it for the rest of her life, like a broken bone that aches in the rain. 

Harold holds out a restraining hand. “We have eyes,” he says quietly, indicating the laptop on the table. 

The camera feed shows a view of the sidewalk below the house, where Peter stands on the far side of the locked front gate. His face is lit by the glare of a street lamp. He’s wearing his most disarming expression, the one that says _we’re all on the same side here, you’ll agree as soon as I explain why._

Grace, the back of her head appearing just inside the camera’s view, looks down on him from the top of the steps.

“Yes, Mr. Arndt, I know who you are,” they can hear her saying. She’s being pretty loud. “Jessica doesn’t want to see you. Like she already told you.”

Peter looks drunk. The camera feed doesn’t have audio, but the way he’s waving his arms around, it’s easy to get the gist of what he’s saying. Jessica hugs her elbows, and Harold touches the back of her hand with his fingertips.

“No, I can’t give her a message. She doesn’t want to hear from you. No, _you_ don’t understand. She didn’t get lost and wander off. She _left you_ because you _hurt her_. And if you ever come back here again, I might just hurt you right back! Now scram!”

The door slams. Peter doesn’t move. The door opens again. “And I’m fixin’ to call the cops, so if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get off my sidewalk!”

“Oh, she’s _livid_ ,” Harold murmurs appreciatively. “Her southern accent always becomes far more pronounced when she’s furious.”

The front door slams. On the screen, Peter turns and stumbles away toward the park. A second later, Grace reappears in the kitchen. 

“The nerve of that man!” she declares. “Did he honestly think we were just gonna invite him in for some coffee and pie?”

“He doubtless thought you would be easier to manipulate. Most people don’t possess your clear-eyed moral judgment. May I kiss you?” Harold cups Grace’s face between his hands and kisses her. “You are terrifying and magnificent.”

Grace beams at him, then turns to Jessica. “Are you okay?” she says in a low voice, like they’re alone in the room.

Jessica leans past Harold and kisses Grace on the lips. It’s sweet and fleeting, just a peck. It might be the first spontaneous thing she’s done since she marched up to John in an airport four years ago. 

At least she trusts Grace not to throw it back in her face.

“Thank you.” Grace blushes. “Both of you,” she says to Harold, who looks discreetly blank. “For looking after me.”

“You looked after Grace first, so I would simply call it an act of reciprocity.” Harold smiles at her gently.

Jessica squares her shoulders, trying to look confident. “If Peter comes back—”

“He won’t.” Harold disentangles himself to reach for the laptop. “I think I can promise you that. Trust an old engineer to have a few tricks up his sleeve.” 

At the kitchen door he pauses, and speaks without turning around. “Actually, I’ll probably be working into the night,” he says. “If you ladies will forgive me for not helping with the washing up.”

“We’ll manage,” Grace says, and takes Jessica’s hand in hers.

*

They go upstairs together. Grace leads Jessica into the bedroom. Wordlessly, they lie down on top of the covers, Grace on the left and Jessica on the right. Jessica doesn’t feel awkward that they aren’t talking; the silence is a conversation all by itself, intimate and comfortable. 

Eventually Jessica pushes her shoes off with her heel, and Grace leans over the side of the bed to grab a throw blanket from the nearby armchair and cover them both up to the chin.

They look at each other, blinking lazily. Jessica pushes a wisp of hair out of Grace’s eyes.

“I’m so happy,” Grace whispers. “You were so quiet and far away when we met you, and now you’re _here_.”

That’s because of Grace, Jessica thinks. She’s so full of life that dead things put up new shoots around her. 

“I’m here,” Jessica agrees. 

“Will you stay?”

“I’ll stay,” she says. It’s a lot better than waiting.

*

**Author's Note:**

> [as if some little Arctic flower](https://www.bartleby.com/113/3010.html)


End file.
